QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Managing Templates

Like other QuickBooks list windows, the Templates window includes commands for managing the templates you create. In the Templates window’s button bar, click Templates, and then choose a command on the shortcut menu. Besides obvious tasks like New, Edit Template, and Delete Template, there are some other helpful things you can do with your templates. The box on Templates Without Tedium describes another way to get templates.

The one problem with the Templates shortcut menu is that you can’t see what the templates look like. If you want to preview templates before you choose one to work on, do the following:

1. Edit any template of the type you want (Invoices, Purchase Orders, and so on).

   In the Templates list, select the type of template you want, and then press Ctrl+E.

2. In the Basic Customization dialog box, click Manage Templates.

   The Manage Templates dialog box opens, listing all the templates of the same type as the one you edited.

3. In the Select Template list, click a template’s name to see a preview of it in the Preview area.

   If you want to rename a template, select it in the Select Template list. Then, in the Template Name box above the preview, type the new name.

POWER USERS’ CLINIC: Templates Without Tedium

Say you find QuickBooks’ built-in templates boring, but you don’t have the time or design know-how to put together templates of your own. You can download spiffier templates from the QuickBooks website. For example, contractors can choose invoice templates with ...